Should the families of candidates be mentioned in selection coverage?
I’ve always had a pretty simple approach to the families of candidates when it comes to campaigning. Remember to thank them for the burden the candidature of their loved one puts on them, and keep them out of political communications.
The latter is always my strong preference. If you choose to use your family in some way as a prop to get elected then how can you reasonably turn around and demand the media and the public leave them alone to their privacy subsequently?
Saying that the behaviour of a teenager at school is none of the media’s business is rather undermined if you’ve previously included said teenager in a photo on a leaflet saying how wonderful your family is, with the implication that this is a reason to vote for you. (Why else include such information unless you think it serves such a purpose? It requires quite remarkably contortions to argue that everything else in your leaflet is about why people should vote for you but you just happened also to include something about yourself without that factor in mind at all.)
It is not a view I carry to extremes. If a candidate goes speak at a school which one of their family attended, I wouldn’t try to censor them from mentioning it in their opening remarks. But it is a view I’ve always tried to follow whenever such decisions are in part up to me.
Important though the local credentials of a candidate can be (and it is something that voters want to hear about and which wins votes), they don’t have to be proven through the family. That is because what people really value is the sense that a candidate is committed to the area, knows the area and is working for the area. Being “local” is a shortcut for all this – which is why even technically non-local candidates can acquire the accolade of being local with enough commitment. That is why living locally by the time of an election also comes out as a vote-winning factor in the research but again, I strongly suspect, not so much for the fact it itself as for it being a really powerful shortcut to indicate something broader. You don’t have to use your family to earn the local points. You do have to work hard to do so.
Which brings me to my regular coverage of Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate selections. (You can find an explanation of what a PPC is here.)
I have followed the same approach and always tried to edit around the quotes from newly selected PPC and the local party which dwell on the PPC’s family. In some cases, I have had to do quite extensive editorial surgery, but it keeps me happy with the outcome.
It does, however, prompt the question of what my readers think of doing this. So over to you…
I can understand your point about candidates not including info about their families but when they have chosen to do so I can’t the logic of your excluding it
I disgree with your views on privacy, but agree more generally on the use of family in election material. One exception I recall was when four generations of the candidiate’s family had lived, and were still living, in the ward, which I felt signified a depth of connection that was worthy of mention.
Well said, Mr Pack. I can’t stand these oh-so-perfect politicians’ families – and it’s unfair on the families, too. If Junior gets into a fight or makes a nuisance of him or herself on the bus back home then that really is their families’ and their school’s business, not the media’s. In addition featuring the Wonderful Family may well put off single households (of which there are a good many, including myself, so I declare an interest!) from voting for them. Far better if the candidate is seen leading a Scout patrol or volunteering at an old people’s home or campaigning for local property developers to include a generous proportion of affordable homes. (A current ‘Archers’ storyline features a developer reneging on this).
Totally agree the family should be kept out. I would go even further and ban references to family in promotional material. First because it discriminates against those who don’t have one. Witness the unseemly preoccupation with the childlessness of female politicians as if the failure to procreate is a bar to political sensitivity.
Second, for the sake of the families, especially the children. As my family are my main point of reference and my main preoccupation – for juggling children’s needs with the rest of one’s life soon becomes one’s life – I too often refer to them when I should not (and they too often point this out). Politicians and candidates probably do the same as we are all only human. Then they get accused of hypocrisy when attention becomes damaging and they act to protect their families. Yet we only realise the damage we do to our nearest and dearest once it is done (who would be doing it otherwise?). Keeping all mention of families out of campaigns may help a bit.
In a general election which will be largely about the EU, I think it is very relevant to mention if a candidate and/or their family is at all ‘foreign’. And at selection stage, I don’t see a problem. Certainly I’d expect a candidate to be comfortable answering questions about their family, although not ‘pushy’.
I was once out canvassing for our candidate in a council election, who happened to be Dutch by birth, and lived outside the ward. The first woman I spoke to did that sort of ‘withdrawal’ that people usually do when they are going to vote for someone else. She then told me that she was going to vote for our candidate this time – because he was ‘local’. The same happened at the next two doors. Then light dawned – the Tory candidate was of South Asian origin. That was the end of the use of ‘local’ in that campaign!
I agree with the principle, though on privacy, it may be a bit hard on the family member who’s been shoehorned into joining the photo. A stress on family can also be a coded way of saying “and don’t vote for X, who isn’t married and hasn’t got kids and there must be some reason for that.” Significant that male candates traditionally featured their wives, but female candidates didn’t so often feature their husbands.
There are exceptions, though I think how they’re handled by the candidate or his/her promoter needs care. If a white candidate had a Black partner who was politically active and up for the challenge, a picture of them together would be a significant statement in a constituency with a lot of sly racism. A candidate with an under-school-age child might fairly mention that with a photo to highlight concerns about preschool provision.
Hmm… “John has eighteen bigamous marriages in thirteen countries, so he has wide experience of different cultures, of childcare and personal relations.”
candidates need to remember that they decided to make themselves a public persona, their family, whilst they may fully support her/him, did not. As Tony suggests, to give some relevant background is fine, in my case ‘single parent of two children(now adult), who attended schools a and b’ is all that is needed.
I always kept my family out of election literature. My children were at schools in my ward and my husband was also a councillor so many people had the information if they wanted to take it into account. I felt that my family were actually publically irrelevant to my capacity to be a good councillor and PPC ( although personally important ). I do know now that my children were embarrassed at being taken to school in a car festooned with election posters!